So... after playing about 8 hours of the new release, I have a couple of observations that I thought I might air. Speculatively, of course. My current system is notorious for instability, irrationality, and general nonsense. Notorious to me, that is. I should also point out that I play almost exclusively fortress mode, so this does not apply to adventure at all (as far as my experience is concerned).
Speed - The new release, for me, starts slow and gets slower. I spent a little time fiddling with settings and the like, but was unable to coax much more in the way of speed out of the simulation. If there's interest, I'll work up some comparative numbers... but my gut feeling tells me that the comparison means little.
AI - I haven't managed to get to the good part (the !!FUN!! parts) as of yet, so I have not taken the full measure of the reaction of the dwarves to full scope of the circumstances that they will encounter. From what I have seen, there are some strange behaviors. I had an outpost liason climb up a tree to get over my curtain wall (after which, the woodcutters came out and cleared the trees around the walls). That same liason then went out and sat in the branches of a tree until he left (did he leave? I don't remember text saying he left.. I will have to go back and check to see if he's still in that tree). The first is simply a result of the the additions to the pathing (which I carefully noted in the devlogs and fully expected SOMEBODY to take advantage of), the second... I dunno. Maybe he really liked that tree..? My biggest concern was over the behavior of the AI in the early phase of the fort, when I was erecting walls and digging trenches. The pathing AI did not seem to handle abrupt changes to the terrain while the dwarf was en route to his destination. I had several dwarves get stuck against walls (they stood against the wall, flashing and blinking '?' until I jogged their shoulder with a little impromptu military service).
On that note, I would also like to point out how much I enjoyed some Kea's freaking out (striken with terror) and getting stuck inside a tunnel just on the other side of the entryway... beyond where my dwarves would hang out between jobs. That being said, I had a couple of dwarves wander along the edge of the map and get stricken with terror [horror] themselves. I read their minds and... apparently they had seen death. Of.. some sort? Maybe? The only dead things had died several seasons before those particular dwarves had shown up. That and I hadn't been invaded by the local goblins/tower undead/bandits/whatever else Toady hasn't told us about. My experience with towers has been that they show up Season One (like the walking dead, only with dwarves... unthink it, I dare you!) and they swarm around like angry bees. This local tower has been particularly benign. Perhaps the local necro died of boredom waiting 250 years for dwarves to show up.
Lastly... and most annoyingly (given how annoying nobles are)... I had a dwarf show up as a part of a migrant wave. She pattered around for a couple seasons and then decided she wanted to be a baroness. In a fort with 33 dwarves. Needless to say, I was not pleased to discover that I now had to peddle to the whims of a petty and whimsical beaurocrat in a time of relative crisis.
GUI - No, I'm not complaining. I happen to prefer ASCII graphics. However. There appears to be missing text for a food in the kitchen. I'd print a label, but my printer's out of ink. My fort has 3 of them, whatever they are. If somebody else runs into this problem, I'll upload my save (and I'll check tomorrow when it's not quarter to 2 in the morning).
Verdict : Despite the oddities, I truly enjoyed my time with Dwarf Fortress... and ruining my friend's day by telling him just before he went on shift that there was a new DF.
-(e)EP
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Topic: Thoughts on 40.01 (Read 497 times)